A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

HOW ODD THAT MASSACRES MOSTLY HAPPEN IN "GUN-FREE ZONES"! When will the brain-dead Left wake up and draw the obvious conclusion? Gun bans kill kids

Friday, January 19, 2018

Pistols for Defense against Bears? Failures are Rare

While discussing bear attacks, a consistent refrain is that pistols are useless as a way to defend yourself against bears. In discussion groups, nay sayers claim that pistols are difficult to use, of insufficient power, and there are numerous instances where people who attempted to use pistols to defend against bears are badly mauled. I have read of numerous cases where people used pistols to successfully defend against bears, so I asked one poster to give some examples where pistol defenses failed. The exchange occurred on freerepublic.com:

“Actually, there are legions of people who have been badly mauled
after using a handgun on a bear. Even some of the vaunted magnums.”OK, give us a few examples. As you claim “legions”, it should not be too hard.

I never received a response. I believe the claim was made in good faith. Posters on freerepublic are known for their honesty and courtesy... or it might be the site's moderators. There has been a plethora of fantasy, fiction, mythology, and electrons sprayed about the inefficacy of pistols used on bears. It takes some serious digging to separate fact from fiction.

I have been engaged in a search for instances where a pistol was used to defend against bears. I and my associates have found 28 instances that are fairly easily confirmed on the Internet. The earliest happened in 1987, the latest mere months ago. The are heavily weighted toward the present, as the ability to publish and search for these incidents has increased, along with increases in bear and human populations, and the carry of pistols.

‘’I wouldn’t want to have another go-round,’’ the 60-year-warden, Lou
Kis, said from his hospital bed after undergoing surgery for the bite,
which was so powerful that it broke the leg bone below the knee.

Mr. Kris, a warden captain here for 22 years, killed the 400- to
500-pound bear with six shots from his .357 caliber Magnum revolver as
it bit him.

But then the bear turned, looked up at Brenner and lunged, said Lewis, who interviewed the three men Saturday.

Brenner fired twice at the center of the hulking shape closing to four or five feet away. The sow, estimated at 400 to 450 pounds, went down. Brenner then put three more bullets into her head.

He used a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol. Lewis said such a low-caliber gun ordinarily doesn't pack enough punch to kill a bear. But Brenner loaded the pistol with full-metal-jacket bullets that penetrated to the bear's vital organs, he said.

"I fired the first shot, and I aimed at its shoulders. When the first shot didn't faze it, I fired the second time, and it turned into the ditch, and I shot three more times, and it went down," said Boyd.

Boyd was down to one remaining bullet in his .44-caliber Magnum when he called Anchorage police for assistance. State trooper Kim Babcock helped Boyd finish off the bear with her shotgun.

It attacked a pair of bow hunters early Saturday afternoon. One
of them used bear pepper spray and halted a charge within nine
feet, but the grizzly turned and charged a second time. That’s when
the second hunter shot it twice with a .44 magnum pistol.

There was not much news coverage of my friends incident up on his place
in Marias pass area here in Montana. The proper agencies investigated
and found him to have defended himself against this 400 lbs sow grizzly
with 2 cubs. Roy was up on the edge of his property tending
his fence line, when out of the brush she was a coming straight at him
with her ears back. Roy drew and put 3 rounds
of 230-gr FMJ in her neck shoulder area, then took off away from the
trail about 5 yards. Roy said the bear was still coming at him, and he
fired 3 more rounds
into her frontal area. And again took off another 5 yards off in
another direction. The sow continued to follow coming at him, so Roy
fired 3 more rounds into her frontal area and she dropped taking a dirt
nap. Roy called to report the incident, and they came out
and brought a metal detector to locate spent extracted shell casings.
Roy was found acting within his right to protect himself against the
grizzly bear attack.
But they said, they wished he would have used Counter Assault Bear
Spray. Roy did not have any, so they gave him a can, plus some 12 ga
cracker shells, and some other 12 ga shells will rubber bullets in them. Roy came into town and purchased a Glock 20 10mm auto now. I'm glad Roy is okay.

Because of many bear-related incidents in this area, Brush always has brown bears on his mind…even when walking a well-maintained road. On just such a road, less than 500 yards from his house, Brush stopped when he heard a twig snap behind him. Turning his head toward the sound, Brush saw a monstrous brown bear charging toward him. "There was no warning," he stresses. "None of the classic teeth-popping or woofing, raising up on hind legs, or bluff-charging that you read about. When I spotted him he was within 15 yards, his head down and his ears pinned back. He was coming like a freight train…in total chase-mode."

Brush instinctively back-pedaled to avoid the charge, drawing the Ruger from its holster. "I fired from the hip as he closed the distance," Brush recalls. "I know I missed the first shot, but I clearly hit him after that. I believe I fired four or five shots. "

Brush finally fell on his back on the edge of the road. Miraculously, the bear collapsed a mere five feet from his boot soles, leaving claw marks in the road where Brush had--only seconds before--been standing. The bear was moaning, his huge head still moving, as Brush aimed the Ruger to fire a finishing shot. "By then my gun had jammed," Greg says. "I frantically called my wife on my cell phone and told her to bring a rifle. When she arrived I finished the bear."

A grizzly bear that emerged from a thicket and charged two backpackers in the backcountry of Denali National Park and Preserve was shot and killed by one of the two who was carrying a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol, according to park officials.

The killing Friday is believed to be the first instance of a hiker killing a grizzly in the park's wilderness. The killing occurred in the original Mount McKinley National Park portion of the Denali, which was expanded by two-thirds in 1980.

A bow hunter reenacts for investigators how he fired a .44 Magnum revolver at a grizzly bear near Paint Creek in the Shoshone National Forest in 2010. Investigators followed a blood trail for half a mile, but could not located the wounded bruin.

But soon, he was facing another, much larger,
problem. His commanding officer told him a lion had been cornered back
at the Thompson home. He headed back, but instead of finding a lion, he
was confronted by an angry bear.

Then
at about 2:45 p.m., a collared boar grizzly identified as bear No. 764
came uncomfortably close. The group’s canister of bear spray was in a
backpack by their horses. A warning shot went off, but the big grizzly
didn’t turn back. “The bear stood up and growled, like something you
would see in a movie,” an eyewitness later told investigators. From less
than 10 feet away, the guide and camp worker drew their .44 and .357
magnum revolvers and together fired four times, ending the 17-year-old
bear’s life.

Many people claim that handguns are useless for protection against
bears. Numerous examples have shown that this is a false notion.
Handguns may not be ideal as defensive weapons for bears, but they can
be effective. In a defensive situation, you have to use what is
available. In this case, a homeowner in Alaska used a .45 against a
brown bear that was trying to get into his house on July 7th of this
year. He and his son were in the home. He had scared off the animal
with some warning shots just three hours before.

Murphy first sprayed bear spray at the bear when it was 15 to 25 feet
away, firing one shot from his .357 revolver when the bear had
approached to within 7-10 feet. The bear was charging uphill at the
time. He only fired one round at the bear, which fell back and
stopped moving when shot. Many have suggested that he should have
continued firing, but it is hard to argue with success.

The bear was roughly 9 feet tall and started its charge at about 20 yards away. The man shot the bear by the time it moved half that distance, Svoboda said.

"It all happened in really tight quarters," he said. "He shot at it five times before it finally stopped and then once it was on the ground, it was still moving. So he shot it one more time and then it died."

According to the angler's report, he was fishing when he heard a noise behind him. He turned around to see three grizzly bears, one adult and two cubs, coming toward him. The adult bear stood on its hind legs, at which point the fisherman fired one shot into the ground to the side of the bear. The bears then turned around and departed the area. The fisherman noted that he was near the "worm hole" area of the Snake River located approximately three quarters of a mile downriver from the Jackson Lake Dam.

The hunter reportedly was carrying bear spray, but apparently couldn’t access it when the attack occurred. Fish and Game officials said the man was able to scare the bear off after he tried to shoot her several times with a .44 magnum revolver pistol at point-blank range.

The archer sustained injuries to his hand and wrist, but hiked out under his own power and was transported by ambulance to Madison County Hospital in Rexburg.

“We immediately found ourselves in a confrontation,” Kluting said. “She
ended up turning around and for a split second we thought she would
leave – but then she turned back and came at us full charge.”
Kluting fired off a warning shot into the creek. At that point the sow was 15 yards away.
“She ran through that without even flinching,” he said.
So Kluting aimed in the middle of the brown blur, now about 3 yards away.
“I barely had time to get the hammer back for another shot before she reached me,” he said.
She collapsed in the river about 5 feet – two steps – away from them.

The hunters jumped up and separated. The bear momentarily halted. Kelley
fired a warning shot from his .45 Super. The bear moved away a little,
behind some fire killed trees and brush, then came in again, fast. Kelly
fired again, and the bear went down, rolled down slope and came to a
halt, motionless.

Miller
managed to pull out his .357 Magnum revolver and squeeze off a shot,
possibly grazing the animal. Then he fell onto his stomach, dug his face
into the dirt and covered his neck.

The bear went for his
exposed right arm, gnawing and clawing it and chipping the bone off the
tip of his elbow. The attack lasted 10 to 15 seconds, then the animal
lumbered away.

As Miller rolled over and was getting to his knees, the bear, only about 40 yards away, came at him again.

He
managed to fire two more shots, but with his right arm badly injured he
thinks he missed the bear. Then he lay still as the animal gnawed and
clawed at him.

After the second attack, Miller played dead
again, lying still for three to five minutes. He tried to move and
realized he couldn’t. He was too badly injured.

“I was just
hoping my radio was still in my vest pocket and it was,” he said. “I got
it out and started radioing mayday, which nobody answered.”

I suspect that successful bear defenses with a pistol are under reported, much like successful firearm defenses against criminals. If a predatory black bear is shot and runs off, there are strong incentives for the shooter not to report the incident. Incidents where no human is injured are seldom considered news. Predatory black bear attacks are the most common fatal black bear attacks in North America. Only six of the pistol defenses listed above are defenses against black bears. Black bear predatory attacks often give potential victims good opportunities to use a pistol effectively.

There are about as many black bear fatalities as there are grizzly bear fatalities. There are strong incentives to not report incidents with grizzly bears where neither bear nor person were injured. A personal friend told me of successfully backing off a grizzly in Alaska with .41 Magnum pistol fire. The incident was never reported and is not included in the list above.

Even in the age of the Internet, reports can become difficult to find after a few years. I recall an incident where an Alaskan State Trooper killed a grizzly bear with his duty pistol, while an associate with a 12 gauge shotgun did not fire. I have not been able to find that report. It may have been the 2013 incident where unarmed Thomas Puerta was killed and eaten. I am not certain.

If anyone has sources for that incident, or of others not recorded here, either successes or failures, please let us know.

Pistol defense failures against bears should be widely reported. When humans are injured by bears, it is news.

In this compilation of incidents, one was a failure. The .357 magnum was fired three times. The shooter was mauled after the first shot and after the second and third shots. It seems likely the shooter missed with all three shots. It is the only bear defense with a pistol, that failed, that we have found.

One failure out of 28 incidents is better than a 96% success rate for pistol defenses against bears. Using a pistol to defend against bear attacks seems to be a viable option.

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Background

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” -- Thomas Jefferson

Syndicated columnist Charley Reese (1937-2013): "Gun control by definition affects only honest people. When a politician tells you he wants to forbid you from owning a firearm or force you to get a license, he is telling you he doesn’t trust you. That’s an insult. ... Gun control is not about guns or crime. It is about an elite that fears and despises the common people."

The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles -- Jeff Cooper (1920-2006)

Note for non-American readers: Crime reports from America which describe an offender just as a "teen" or "teenager" almost invariably mean a BLACK teenager.

We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

How much do you know about Trayvon Martin? Did you recognize him in the picture above? If not you may need to know more about him. It's all here (Backups here and here)

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” -- Robert A. Heinlein

After all the serious stuff here, maybe we need a funny picture of a cantankerous cat